Published: November 04, 2009 08:49 am      

U.S. Army’s Robin Sage active in Oakboro

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 — Oakboro hosted the U.S. Army’s Robin Sage training last week, which culminated in an abduction exercise Saturday.

Robin Sage is a training exercise conducted by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg for U.S. Army Special Forces candidates. It is the last phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) before they receive their “Green Berets.”

It is a 19-day exercise that is conducted four times a year. The training occurs on both public and private land, encompassing 10 counties and nearly 4,500 square miles, which is also known as Pineland.

This exercise involves approximately 100 Special Forces students, 100 counter-insurgent personnel (OPFOR), 200 guerrilla personnel, 40 auxiliary personnel and 50 cadre.

The local communities also participate in the exercise by role playing as citizens of Pineland. All participating personnel, except the auxiliary, are active duty military.

Students are isolated for five days and issued an operations order. They begin the intense planning process and study material required to execute their detachment’s mission during the exercise.

On the last day of isolation the detachment presents its plan to the battalion command and staff. This plan will explain how the commander intends to execute the mission. The next day, the students make an airborne infiltration into the country of Pineland.

They then make contact with the guerrilla forces and begin Robin Sage. Students will then begin their task of training, advising and assisting the guerrillas. The training will educate the guerrillas in various specialties, including weapons, communications, medical, and demolitions and is designed to enable the guerrillas to begin liberating their country from oppression.

Oakboro Police Chief Joe Lowder notified businesses and residents in Oakboro last week of the training that would be taking place around town, which he believes made a difference in how the town reacted to the training exercise.

“We sent out hot mail and hot faxes to many of the local businesses, so when some of the citizens spoke to the business owner about some ’suspicious people’ around, the business owner were able to explain the situation,” Lowder said.

“We believe this was able to satisfy some of the fears of the residents.”

Because of the success of the Robin Sage notification, Lowder plans to use the hot mail/hot fax program, where an e-mail or fax concerning things going on around town is sent to those who wish to receive them, for all events in town. He also plans to utilize Facebook and Twitter with the same updates. If you’d like to receive a hot mail/hot fax notification, contact Lowder at (704) 485-4214. Facebook updates will be located on Joe Lowder’s page and Twitter updates will be available through the Oakboro PD page.